The the consumer graphics industry is about to see yet another round of competition between top market players AMD and NVIDIA in March, with reports suggesting that the red team (AMD) has chosen March 8 as the launch date of its Radeon HD 6990 graphics card. NVIDIA's response, the GeForce GTX 590 is slated for sometime later in March, as well. AMD is said to be finalizing the SKU, and it should be launched by partners on the 8th of next month. The Radeon HD 6990 is a dual-GPU "CrossFire on a stick" solution, in which two AMD Cayman GPUs with 2 GB of memory each, work in tandem.

DirectX 9? Console ports?Sub 720p textures?
Just about everybody willing to shell out the money for this would be more interested in playing the super high-end PC only games that have high res textures either officially or through mods.

By the way, 720p is almost always referred to as a display resolution. Textures use 512, 1024, 2048, etc.

4870x2 was horrible but 5970, god damn its a good card.
a friend of mine has it, and he plays sooo many titles, no problems whatso ever.
5970 is under 300W, and its reasonably quiet for its performance, and rumours tell us that 6990 is even better made in every area.

4870x2 broke in 6 months, while friends still rock with the 5970 without needing to dustclean them like they did with old x2 cards.
times change... microstutter is still present tho, to a certant degree.

DirectX 9? Console ports?Sub 720p textures?
Just about everybody willing to shell out the money for this would be more interested in playing the super high-end PC only games that have high res textures either officially or through mods.

By the way, 720p is almost always referred to as a display resolution. Textures use 512, 1024, 2048, etc.

4870x2 was horrible but 5970, god damn its a good card.
a friend of mine has it, and he plays sooo many titles, no problems whatso ever.
5970 is under 300W, and its reasonably quiet for its performance, and rumours tell us that 6990 is even better made in every area.

4870x2 broke in 6 months, while friends still rock with the 5970 without needing to dustclean them like they did with old x2 cards.
times change... microstutter is still present tho, to a certant degree.

Sorry, can you be more specific when you say bugs? Especially when you're claiming that SLI with lower end cards is a better option, you do realize that by mentioning bugs along with power hungriness has you pointing to ALL types of SLI/Crossfire systems whether its on one card or two separate cards it is the same protocol dude but granted that a single dual gpu card will most likely require less power to run and leave more room in the case with less heat dumped in it also...

I smell trolling with this post. there is no way in hell a 32nm 6 core 12 thread CPU with one of the highest end video cards couldn't play BC2 over 20FPS. hell i got 30-40FPS with my I7 920 and a 9600GT while i waiting on my 5850 to arrive.

Its true that internal CF cards suffer a lot more problems than external CF cards, but to that extent, its possibly BC2's fault, or AMD couldn't find the bug. Yes, Obviously Dual GPU cards have much more problems than single chip solutions, but that's because of the added complexity of the card, and therefore more prone to problems and failure. Yes, there are a lot of other options which are cheaper and more efficient, but power consumption wise, its hard for a dual card solution to beat dual gpu configuration, assuming that you are comparing the same generation. Also, cheaper solutions more likely than not occupies much more space, and it may not be an option. To me, internal CF or SLi is a alternative, rather than a route someone is forced to take: Games nowadays are so console limited that a decent mid range card like GTX 560 Ti and 6850 can easily power it at high settings, and people who go for dual card/dual chip is either asking for trouble or they are willing to suffer minor inconveniences to get that extra fps and increase their epeen.

I smell trolling with this post. there is no way in hell a 32nm 6 core 12 thread CPU with one of the highest end video cards couldn't play BC2 over 20FPS. hell i got 30-40FPS with my I7 920 and a 9600GT while i waiting on my 5850 to arrive.

wahdangun

Guest

Its true that internal CF cards suffer a lot more problems than external CF cards, but to that extent, its possibly BC2's fault, or AMD couldn't find the bug. Yes, Obviously Dual GPU cards have much more problems than single chip solutions, but that's because of the added complexity of the card, and therefore more prone to problems and failure. Yes, there are a lot of other options which are cheaper and more efficient, but power consumption wise, its hard for a dual card solution to beat dual gpu configuration, assuming that you are comparing the same generation. Also, cheaper solutions more likely than not occupies much more space, and it may not be an option. To me, internal CF or SLi is a alternative, rather than a route someone is forced to take: Games nowadays are so console limited that a decent mid range card like GTX 560 Ti and 6850 can easily power it at high settings, and people who go for dual card/dual chip is either asking for trouble or they are willing to suffer minor inconveniences to get that extra fps and increase their epeen.

Just because I don't like something can't afford it or perfer something different don't make the other item garbage. Those who run ultra high end really don't care we just want the best and are willing to pay for it. Bugs don't matter power don't matter Just get what u want or save up for it

I smell trolling with this post. there is no way in hell a 32nm 6 core 12 thread CPU with one of the highest end video cards couldn't play BC2 over 20FPS. hell i got 30-40FPS with my I7 920 and a 9600GT while i waiting on my 5850 to arrive.

But I am also sure this card will also Be Hot 90c+!/ Also Be Buggy/ Also Have a Ridiculously Loud Fan Too/ Finally Horribly Cut Down Because of power restrictions!!!!!

It makes me think... wouldn't one be better off buying a a couple of 6970's or 6950's then this. The only reason I would pick one up is because it is proven to make your E-Pen15 to grow buy 13 inches when you get it.

Still A really bad ass card and I have all the best wishes for it and I hope I am wrong!

2 card SLI and Crossfire solutions are only better if you actually want to use 2 16x slots for video cards. Personally, I prefer using only one of my slots, especially now that SSDs are coming down in price. Uber dual GPU card in the top 16x slot, uber RAID controller card and multiple SSDs (or just a PCIe based SSD like the RevoDrive) in the second slot. Still leaves plenty of room for my sound card, too. SLI/Crossfire on a stick has it's place and uses.

My 4870X2 plays BC2 (and any other game) just fine with no microstutter. The only bugs I have are the rare games that don't support Xfire (which effects regular SLI and Xfire setups anyway), and the bugs that everyone has with ATI, like scaling and refresh rate. There are absoltuely no bugs that effect a 4870X2 that don't also effect 4870 Xfire setups.

That said, I should mention that I have a 1250w PSU and water cool, so power consumption, heat and noise are non-issues for me.

But still, the point remains, multi card setups are not always better.